They want to build 60 houses on the fields next door

[stopthebuild]

Help!

I have to submit my objections shortly and we really want to get this plan scrapped.

There are fields directly behind the house (higher than us as were in a valley).

The plot has been earmarked for development as part of the councils 6 year plan.

Access isn't great, the water that already runs down is concerning in bad weather and has entered neighbours properties and there are plenty of brownfield sites around.

Does anybody work in this area or have knowledge of how to best object to this?

Thank you, I'd be grateful for any wisdom here.

We have noticed that parish councils have no idea about engaging professionals for advice. It is very much the "nice to have" in the plans but far less of the reality. We have a parish council that did not want any housing at all. There will be some. In the meantime our Conservatioon area continues to be ruined by their modern paving solutions and out of place concrete planters! Who has any faith in parish councils?

The area plans are done bye District Councils or unitgary councils. They have access to planners, engineers etc. So it depends if this is a very local parish plan or a wider plan for housing in a County or District. The latter is much more difficult to change because they usually MUST find housing space or the plan will be rejected by the Inspector.

Likelihood is that the houses will be built. You might get a small reduction 'as a gesture' to around 55.
They did the same here - flood plain, inadequate infrastructure, parking, health provision at capacity but the houses got built all the same. Imagine the surprise when some homes flooded, the sewers blocked and overflowed and everyone, gusp, parked on the roads as not enough parking space was created! Emergency vehicles now cannot make it down the road and the council do feck all as the builders haven't handed it back to them so maintenance and streets etc aren't the councils problem.

There is no need for any houses to flood if water mitigation is designed properly. Lots of councils don’t insist on the right designs and developers sometimes pay for unworkable designs. They don’t employ their own experts. Like everything else in life, pay the price for expert design and you get it.

The Environment Agency should be consulted on any application for development on a site known to have flooding problems - they are the experts. They will also be consulted on new Local Plan proposals.

@PickAChew

Surely there must be some great crested newts, somewhere ;)

In one of my friends' developments, the developer was allowed to move them a couple of miles away. Though it meant the developer couldn't build as many houses as they wanted.

The Environment Agency are supposed to be the experts but in real life——? We get flooded estates and problems. This can be greatly alleviated by engineering design. The EA doesn’t design. Not necessarily held in great esteem either as they have repeatedly shown their advice isn’t great.

You could hire a planning consultant to write an objection for you. Get someone who knows your local council. They should be able to tell you first if there are any legitimate grounds for objection and how much they will charge.I did this recently and it cost around £1000 for a very comprehensive objection.

In the dealings I've had with the EA they have been very proactive in suggesting design solutions and prescriptive with conditions being imposed on planning permissions. Equally they have been robust in objecting to proposals where mitigation hasn't been possible or forthcoming, and willing to defend those views at Inquiry.

They might suggest but they don’t do the design. If they were always right, there would not be flooding of new estates.

At local plan level, no one has a detailed design anyway. Few people will know what can and cannot be done on each site. Developers engage consultants when they submit planning applications but who is going to spend £££££ on this prior to certain identification of a site? A developer might look at feasibility but not pay for a full scale design.

Chances of you being successful are remote. Best chance is to get the parish council on board.

Our village led by the parish council led an objection against a massive development on the edge of our village. The school said they were full, the doctors said the same. They employed a drainage specialist who said about water run off and flooding risk. It was an ancient and rare medieval ridge and furrows field.

Initially planning permission was refused. The developers appealed and won and have now built 500 houses.

There are differences between the construction of local plans which are designed to determine where housing should go, and planning permission applied for by the housing developers after the plan has identified where houses will go.

Once a local plan has identified sites, it’s very difficult to stop the houses being built by refusing planning permission. Councils occasionally decide to go against their own local plan due to highly organised pressure from parish councils and others but Inspectors usually determine it can go ahead because the land was earmarked in the local plan for development. Councils run a big financial risk by turning down planning permission on identified land. So that’s why the housing gets built. They can, of course, determine drainage, roads and layout. Schools snd surgeries can be extended and with 500 houses they probably would be.